Mridu Rai - Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir

The illustrations listed in the Contents page cannot be included for copyright reasons.

The Opus1 Series

This series comprises outstanding first-time academic monographs in the broad area of South Asian Studies. It is intended as a publishing forum for the first important books of a younger generation of scholars in the disciplines of History, Politics, Sociology, Literature, Cinema Studies, and related disciplines.

Consulting Editors

Muzaffar Alam Chris Bayly Rajeev Bhargava
Neeladri Bhattacharya Sugata Bose Partha Chatterjee
Vasudha Dalmia Veena Das Amitav Ghosh
Ramachandra Guha Sudipta Kaviraj Ashis Nandy
Prabhat Patnaik Rupert Snell Ravi Vasudevan

Books in the Series

SUNIL SHARMA
PERSIAN POETRY AT THE INDIAN FRONTIER

VEENA NAREGAL
LANGUAGE POLITICS, ELITES, AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

CHARU GUPTA
SEXUALITY, OBSCENITY, COMMUNITY

RAMINDER KAUR
PERFORMATIVE POLITICS AND THE CULTURES OF HINDUISM

MRIDU RAI
HINDU RULERS, MUSLIM SUBJECTS

CHITRALEKHA ZUTSHI
LANGUAGES OF BELONGING

RAJIT K. MAZUMDER
THE INDIAN ARMY AND THE MAKING OF PUNJAB

PRATEEK CHAKRABARTI
WESTERN SCIENCE IN MODERN INDIA (forthcoming)

Hindu Rulers,
Muslim Subjects

ISLAM, RIGHTS, AND
THE HISTORY OF KASHMIR

MRIDU RAI

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PERMANENT BLACK 2004

eISBN 978 81 7824 411 2

e-edition:First Published 2012

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For My Parents

Contents

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. View of the City and Jummu Musjedd (in Srinuggur) by J. Needham, after drawings by Mrs H. Clark, 1858, P2441.

2. Maharaja Gulab Singh, Add.Or.707.

3. Maharaja Ranbir Singh, Add.Or.3003.

4. Hindu Festival, Cashmere, P1363.

5. Priest and Worshippers at the Shiva Temple, Srinagar, a Kashmiri Artist, c. 185060, Add.Or.1745.

6. Preacher and Worshippers at the Wooden Mosque of Shah Hamdan, Srinagar, a Kashmiri Artist, c. 185060, Add.Or. 1744.

7. Muslim Procession To Ward Off Sudden Misfortune , a Kashmiri Artist, c. 185060, Add.Or. 1664.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude for the assistance I have received from various people and institutions in researching and writing this book.

Since this work has grown out of a dissertation I wrote at Columbia University, I am grateful first of all to my supervisor there, Professor Ayesha Jalal. I thank her for her unflagging encouragement and inspiration. She taught me the importance of speaking from a position of intellectual honesty, particularly on a subject of sensitivity such as this book addresses. I hope it does some justice to that lesson. I am grateful also to Professor Sugata Bose, who has been unstintingly supportive of the project from its earliest hiccups as a rough grant proposal to its present form. My gratitude is owed also to Professors David Armitage, David Cannadine and Leonard Gordon, each of whom I had the privilege of working with and learning from at Columbia University.

My heartfelt thanks to Professor Barbara N. Ramusack who made it possible for me to start on this endeavour in the first place: she shared with me, a treasure trove of her own notes on Kashmir from the India Office Library while I was still only writing a seminar paper in my first year of the graduate programme.

The research for the book was conducted, in large part, in Jammu and Kashmir, and in years when life was, to put it as euphemistically as a friend once did, 'uneasy'. Therefore I cannot emphasize enough that my work would have been simply impossible without the help of friends in the field. My thanks, first of all, to Parvez Dewan, who literally opened up the Jammu and Kashmir Archives for me, consented to holding interminably probing conversationseducated beyond any enquirer's dreamsand provided the hospitality of his home. I thank him for all this and above all for his friendship. In Jammu, I would like to thank Shri Kirpal Singh, a friend and a prince among archivists.

For making possible my first research trip to Srinagar in 1995, I owe my thanks to Mrs. Farida Khan who introduced me to her mother and brother: Mrs. Mohammed Abdulla and Afzal Abdulla. My gratitude to them not only for the comforts of their beautiful home and for the luxury of coming back to stimulating conversation, but also for divine kahwa and delectable Kashmiri food. I am equally indebted to Shujaat Bukhari and to Khursheed-ul-Islam for their friendship, good humour, contacts and safe trips across town.

Writing this book has made me more keenly aware of the many friendships, both within and outside the academy, that I have relied on so heavily over the last few years. My heartfelt thanks to Nausheen Anwar, Vijay Dhawan, Suzanne Globetti, Marc Hetherington, Heige Kim, Fred Lee, Nomi Levy, Lara Merlin, Farina Mir, Sanjay Muttoo, Kirsten Olsen, Patrick Rael, Nerina Rustomji, Aradhana Sharma and Tasneem Suhrawardy. I am truly grateful to them for the many neces-sary moments of hilarity, for lending me their ears as I 'kvetched', and for the funds of inspiration I derived from each of them.

I also thank most sincerely Mahesh Rangarajan not only for volunteering to read a draft of this book but also for offering his many perspicacious and invaluable comments. Many thanks, of course, to Rukun Advani at Permanent Black for trusting in this book and also for the painstaking editing that makes it easier on the eye than it might otherwise be.

I wish to record my gratitude for the help I received from the staff of the following institutions: the National Archives of India, New Delhi; the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library; the Jammu and Kashmir State Archives; the India Office Library and Records. I am indebted to the British Library for permission to reproduce the images that appear in this book.

I thank Columbia University for giving me a Travelling Fellowship for 1994-5 and the Taraknath Das Foundation for providing me with funding with which to finish up writing. I also thank the Freeman Foundation at Bowdoin College for giving me a Summer Fellowship that allowed me to return to Kashmir and Delhi in 2000.

However, none of this would have been possible without the support of my family. My love and thanks to my parents, Rajendra and Rani Rai, and my brother, Animesh, for their encouragement, under-standing, indulgences and confidence in me.

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